Forum / Names

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  Lynn Beighley

  Aug 21, 11:11pm

  Where do your names come from? Your character names, your titles, names you invent for things that don't exist?

  Do your names offer clues to your characters? Or do you pick names that are meaningless?

  Do you assume things about people before you meet them because of their names?

• 
  Joani Reese

  Aug 21, 11:53pm

  Louise is my favorite character. She's inhabited three of my stories, but though they all reflected Louise's sensibility, she's been named in only one. She reflects, for me, a type of middle-aged woman who is fairly worldly-wise but open to persuasion by outside forces. Many of my characters don't have a name so they can reflect anyone, but Louise just won't go away.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 22, 02:54am

  When you've acquired the habit of reading telephone books in strange hotel rooms in strange cities late into the night, you pick up a lot of names... a lot. Although I haven't done that for years, I can usually conjure up a fitting name on demand.

  If the name for a character doesn't come immediately to mind, phone books, remembered and present are a vast treasure of possibilities.

  I never forget names as a rule, although I'm not that good at putting the person together with the name. People can be forgettable, but their names stay with you.

  The most fascinating name I ever heard was Buxton Dukes, who is/was a real person, so I never used it in fiction. His story would make a fine match to the tone and bluster of his name, but some things you really can't write about.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 22, 03:02am

  When you've acquired the habit of reading telephone books in strange hotel rooms in strange cities late into the night, you pick up a lot of names... a lot. Although I haven't done that for years, I can usually conjure up a fitting name on demand.

  If the name for a character doesn't come immediately to mind, phone books, remembered and present are a vast treasure of possibilities.

  I never forget names as a rule, although I'm not that good at putting the person together with the name. People can be forgettable, but their names stay with you.

  The most fascinating name I ever heard was Buxton Dukes, who is/was a real person, so I never used it in fiction. His story would make a fine match to the tone and bluster of his name, but some things you really can't write about.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 22, 03:04am

  Sorry for the redundancy.

• 
  Lynn Beighley

  Aug 22, 03:21am

  What's this "telephone book" of which you speak, JLD? ;)

  There was a guy named Steven Evenhouse on Jeopardy. Not sure what his parents were thinking. I wonder if his full name is
  teven Evan Evenhouse.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Aug 22, 03:31am

  Telephone books were huge portable databases stored on bulky paper hardrives and coded with ink... the bits and bytes of a bygone epoch. They were often chained to public telephones in little booths made of aluminum and acrylic plastic with folding doors.

  In order to use these telephones, you had to insert little flash drives called quarters... but once you put them in, you could never get them back unless you had a little clicker toy tuned to the proper frequency. That, of course, was illegal and if you got caught, you could go to the big house.

  In retrospect, it all sounds quite insane.

• 
  Misti Rainwater-Lites

  Aug 22, 05:52am

  People have been giving me all kinds of hell for my name since kindergarten. I wish my mom had named me Amanda Nicole or Veronica Michelle instead of Misti Velvet. I wouldn't have had to fight so hard for scraps of respect.

  These questions are familiar. I've answered them someplace else recently, I'm certain of it. In my latest self-published book, FUDGE, there are at least two different stories that feature a protagonist named Cougar. In my first novel the protagonist's name is Nova. In Bunny Man, my bizarro novella, the main characters are Kiedis and Velvet Jane. I have fun with names. I get them from pop culture and the phone book, mostly. I have studied phone books in motel rooms, as well. I like phone books better than most television shows.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Aug 24, 06:15am

  This is pretty morbid, even for a writer, but some cemeteries have online catalogues of who's buried there. I've utilized this option once, but have since realized the megabad juju of it.

• 
  J.A. Pak

  Aug 26, 06:44pm

  I'm finding social media an invaluable source for entertaining and interesting names.

• 
  Robert Vaughan

  Aug 26, 06:52pm

  If I'm at a loss for a name which is unusual, I'll pick up a book I've not yet read (most writers have a huge pile of them laying around) and turn to any anonymous page. If I see a name like Matthew, I will choose the first name close to it that pops into my head, for example: Maxwell.

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